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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: A radical idea
From:       Seth Nickell <snickell () stanford ! edu>
Date:       2001-11-13 21:33:46
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On Tue, 2001-11-13 at 08:06, Bernhard Rosenkraenzer wrote:
> On 12 Nov 2001, Seth Nickell wrote:
> 
> > info    ->    (eliminate? my /usr/info has like 3 items in it)
> 
> That's because it's obsolete, info pages live in /usr/share/info these 
> days (same for /usr/man).
> Putting them (and all other not architecture dependent files) in 
> /usr/share allows the directory to be shared among all machines on your 
> network (therefore the name), no matter whether they're all x86 or they're 
> mixed x86, alpha, sparc, arm, s390 and whatever machines.

Yes, I know what /usr/share is for, that's why its still a seperate
directory in both my "proposals". Actually, they are more toy examples
than anything...I'm suprised at how few problems you have pointed out
here ;-)

> > sbin    ->    Administration Tools
> 
> Newbies thinking of "Administration Tools" will think "kcontrol, 
> knetstat, ...", none of which is in /sbin or /usr/sbin.

I doubt it actually, but perhaps user testing would prove me wrong. Note
that in the restructured form they are placed under System/, indicating
their unix-y nature.

> > /Devices <- "mnt"
> 
> What about /dev? ;)

Sure, you could probably find a name that didn't conflict as much, or,
better, put /dev/ in /System/Device Nodes/ or something like that.

> > So a user browsing the root node would see:
> > 
> > Applications    Development   Devices    Documentation   
> > Home            Storage       System
> > 
> > Still not perfect, but a *LOT* better than the existing state.
> 
> better as in easier for newbies, yes.
> better as in better, no.

Uh, please define the metric where its worse? This isn't a proposal for
a conventional Linux distribution, this is a proposal for a desktop
system where the most important users will probably range from newbies
to intermediate. Personally, I think the restructured form actually
makes more sense and gets a lot of crap directories out of the way (even
as a a hacker / "advanced user" I hardly ever access directories like
/boot unless I happen to be upgrading the kernel that month).

It would be valuable to almost anyone who uses a graphical desktop to
give applications a useful directory. The truth is that /bin and
/usr/bin and /usr/X11R6/bin are pretty useless directories for browsing
because they contain hundreds to thousands of entries. They are
practically "write only" directories ;-)

-Seth

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